Haemanthus fertility
J.E. Shields (Thu, 08 Jan 2004 06:26:18 PST)

Hi everyone,

Regarding Angelo's questions and comments, I find that my one clone of
Haemanthus albiflos some years produces a good crop of seeds, like this
year; other years -- indeed, most years -- it produces none. In either
case, I haven't intentionally hand-pollinated the albiflos.

A year or so ago, I tried pollinating Haemanthus humilis hirsutus by
itself, and got one seed. Pollinating the one clone of H. albiflos with
hirsutus pollen produced maybe a dozen or more seeds -- but are they true
hybrids or did the hirsutus pollen just stimulate an apomictic seed
production? Maybe in 4 to 6 years, when some of them start to bloom, I'll
be able to say. H. albiflos seedlings can be as hairy as hirsutus
seedlings at this early stage of their growth, so a little hair on the
leaves is not conclusive at the moment.

I pollinated the hirsutus another time with fresh coccineus pollen, andvice
versa. I got no seeds on the coccineus, but did get maybe a half dozen
seeds on the hirsutus. Again, did I really get hybrids, or parthenogenic
seeds of hirsutus?

Although the chromosome number of Haemanthus is sometimes listed as n = 8
or 9, most of the numbers seem to be n = 8:

H. albiflos, 2n = 16
H. coccineus, 2n = 16 from two references
H. humilis hirsutus, 2n = 16

So these crosses, [albiflos X humilis hirsutus] and [humilis hirsutus X
coccineus] are, at least on the face of things, compatible in chromosome
counts.

I had three plants of H. barkerae bloom this past season, all from the same
batch of seeds from Rachel Saunders. I pollinated those three across each
other and got no seeds at all. For H. barkerae, 2n = 16 also. This was
the second time these barkerae had tried to bloom; the previous year, the
scapes aborted just short of actual anthesis. Still, they may just be too
small, to young, to support seed production.

A very good question , Angelo.

Regards,
Jim Shields
in central Indiana (USA)

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